The evolution of clinical technologies presents potential adopters with considerations in planning for clinical program development that include the stage and the rate of a technology's evolution. This paper presents a conceptual framework for these considerations and applies the framework to orthopedic technologies. Eight orthopedic surgeons were asked to assess 14 orthopedic technologies and position each of them along a spectrum of research, clinical, and adopted technologies. The distribution of responses for each technology–year combination is presented, and estimates of central tendency, dispersion, and variances provide measures of the change in the distribution of responses over time for each technology and the change in the degree of rater consensus over time for each technology. While orthopedic trauma was chosen to illustrate the technology spectrum model, the model and assessment methodology is applicable to other medical specialties as well. Adoption of this framework in a hospital setting should enable more systematic and effective clinical program development.

This paper considers standard effective treatments for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and early breast cancer in premenopausal women. The literature assesses the treatments' effectiveness, and expected charges for different treatments in the context of the Belgian Health Insurance System are compared. Ovariectomy in breast cancer (770 ECU) and conventional chemotherapy in non-Hodgkin (2,745 lymphoma ECU) prove equally effective and are less costly in comparison with chemotherapy (1,904 ECU) in breast cancer or chemotherapy and autologous bone marrow transplantation (19,262 ECU) in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Further unbiased insights in competitive treatments' costs and outcome could save money and enhance developments in cancer care.

The Health Council of the Netherlands (Gezondheidsraad) is the scientific advisory body on health and health care to the Dutch government. Its recommendations cover fields that relate to the health of the population, such as clinical medicine, public health, environmental protection, food and nutrition, and occupational hygiene. Independent multidisciplinary committees draw up the Council's advisory reports. The Council's 1997 Executive Summaries booklet is now available. The reports are:

This assessment was undertaken at the request of a Regional Health Authority to provide input into a funding decision on a computerized dynamic posturography (CDP) system for use by a rehabilitation department.

In Catalonia, ultrasonographic control of pregnancies is carried out in hospitals and in certain primary care centers within the women's care program. There is no scientific evidence on its efficacy in the improvement of the fetal viability at this level of care; therefore, the question of whether obstetric ultrasonography is efficacious and safe in primary care cannot be answered properly to recommend its application. However, it may be assessed whether routine ultrasonography, the one expected to be carried away in primary care centers, is more effective than selective ultrasonography, i.e., the one carried away in the referential gynecology and obstetrics service due to risk conditions during the pregnancy.

Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) is an idiosyncratic drug reaction first reported in the literature in the 1940's. Two different types of HIT have been identified. Type I, also known as benign, early-onset thrombocytopenia, occurs in as many as 20% of patients receiving heparin and is characterized by up to a 30% reduction in baseline platelet counts during the first few days of therapy. Despite reductions in platelet count, most patients with this type of HIT have platelet values above 100 × 109 cells/L, and this condition usually resolves in a few days without further adverse sequelae.

The Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine at the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover is one of the leading university-based public health departments in Germany. It is divided into units for health system analysis, epidemiology, prevention, and health economics. The department offers a postgraduate master's degree program in public health. The staff number is approximately 25, two-thirds of whom are researchers. The German Federal Ministries of Health and of Education, Science, Research, and Technology are the major providers of research grants. The department is the managerial focus of the North German Center for Public Health Research. Internationally, the department is an active member of the International Society of Technology Assessment in Health Care (ISTAHC), the European Healthcare Management Association (EHMA), and the International Society for Quality Assurance (ISQua). The department has been involved in several European-wide studies and collaborates with the World Health Organization (WHO).